Time Out! Poem by David Lewis Paget

You said you needed personal space,
You said you needed to think,
The moment your lesbian friend called round
I said I needed a drink!
So I left you there in the Coffee Shop
To talk about women's things,
And when I returned the following day
You'd taken off both your rings.

Now I might look dumb, and probably am,
But I've given you plenty of rope,
So now if you're going to hang yourself
I'll give up living in hope.
Is your life so empty and torpid
That my love is never enough,
She whispers things in your shell-like ear
That would make a man throw up.

You say we're not going anywhere,
That what we have is a bore,
You said you needed to get away
As you pushed me out through the door,
Then I heard you'd gone to lie on a beach
But where, you wouldn't say,
Getting a dose of sun and sea
As you planned for a life away.

You said you thought we were all washed up,
But you might come back, you might,
Keeping your options open while
I lay awake in the night,
I wondered why I was such a fool
But there, I'm only a man,
And silly me was in paradise
Whenever you held my hand.

You always seemed to be fretting then,
You needed to take Time Out,
While I spent time at the Take-Away
With a burger, and seeds of doubt,
You'd come back home and be laughing
But I knew that it wouldn't last,
A day or two, you'd be gone again,
Just like you had in the past.

And that is the reason I've barred the door,
To get you out of my life,
It's sad, for there was a time that I
Had thought to make you my wife.
You can't come in, you can take Time Out
For the rest of your life on earth,
For me, I have me a new romance,
Your lesbian got here first!

17 March 2013